Modern analysis supports notion that photos taken in 1965 were not faked.

UFO skeptics often allege that there is no authentic photographic evidence that UFOs exist. UFO photos are often featureless "lights in the sky," misidentified birds or airplanes, natural phenomena such as Venus or some peculiar-looking cloud, crude hoaxes (doctored negatives, string-suspended models, thrown hubcaps) or pictures and videos that have been computer-manipulated (Photoshop).

There are hundreds of UFO photos and videos on the Internet, but a safe bet is that a high percentage are completely worthless.

There is at least one exception, however, and it is a huge exception. Around noon on Aug. 3, 1965, near the intersection of what is today Walnut Avenue and Myford Road in Tustin, Rex Heflin, a 38-year-old highway maintenance engineer, snapped three close-up photos through the windows of his truck of a low-flying hat-like UFO. (He also took a fourth picture; more on that later).

The pictures Heflin took with the Polaroid camera he carried for work clearly show a round, hat-like object with a dark band around its raised superstructure.

The pictures of the object are unambiguously clear and present an immediate problem for skeptics: Either the photos are clever fakes or they are actual pictures of a very unconventional flying craft; there is simply no third alternative explanation.

Heflin initially told investigators that he believed that he had probably photographed an experimental aircraft from a nearby Marine base. As we shall discover shortly, however, there are several unique features in the pictures themselves that lower the probability that the strange craft was one of "ours.